I was actually able to motivate myself and write two posts within the space of a couple of days, first time that's happened I'm pretty sure.
So, a couple of random village stories. These are both taken from my journal for which I apologize, but I promise I will not subject you to 'journal-ly' talk (example: I was watching the sunset today and started thinking about death, and how someday I'll shuffle off this mortal coil...nobody wants to hear that junk, which is why you put it in a journal. Back to the story).
Right now I'm sitting in my chair watching a ragtag band of iwes (children) furiously sweeping my yard, they're setting to with such vigor they've kicked up a small dust storm. This is high comedy marked by collisions, loud cries of "iwe!" (you) and lots of sweeping to cross-purpose as one child will brush the leaves and twigs in one direction only to have another sweep it back into the area just cleared. So, essentially, the yard has been divided into 8 mini-kingdoms, each cleared by sweeping the refuse into the neighboring area.
This all started when I promised the kids clustered around me that I'd give them each a sweetie if they swept my cluttered yard free of the detritus that had collected in my absence (it collects even when I'm here although not as quickly as I'll occasionally kick a bit of it away on my way out of my yard). There was a brief pause as they processed my heavily-accented bemba, sifted through my outrageous sentence structure, and parsed my misplaced inflections; then their faces lit up when the import of my words dawned on them, followed by a stampede out of the yard, bare feet thumping against the packed dirt, laughter and squeals of delight trailing behind them. Silence settled around me, and I imagined birds chirping, crickets singing and a soft breeze shushing through the trees. Then they returned, bursting into my yard wielding makeshift brooms of twigs (the conservationist in me wondered how many bushes' deaths I'd just commissioned because I'm too lazy to sweep my own yard) and began their mostly ineffective but ferocious sweeping. There was one kid standing in the middle of the yard beaming at me, clearly wanting to make sure that I noticed that he was working so he could be justly rewarded later. The problem was that he wasn't really sweeping, he was mostly flailing the ground with a few bedraggled twigs while he maintained his 100 watt, self-satisfied smile directed my way. He either thought I was unfamiliar with what constitutes sweeping (actually, a reasonable conclusion to draw, there is nothing in my village conduct that would have disabused him of that notion) or that I was more interested in form and a pleasant demeanor than actual results. I gave him a sweetie anyways because he made me laugh.
Early one morning joel and I helped one of my village friends, ba Kaunda, to harvest her groundnut (peanut) field. Ba Kaunda is one of the most respected women in the village and a banacimbusa, a teacher of tradition to younger women in the village concerning marriage, keeping house, etc...very important in the village setting. She looks the part as well as she is tall and big boned with high, prominent cheekbones; she is highly educated by Zambian standards and speaks very good English. She is easily my best female friend in the village, which is how I ended up helping her harvest her groundnut field. I was enjoying the time, it was early so the day was still cool and the village mostly quiet. I could look across the river at the dambo (low-lying, swampy area with high elephant grass) and admire the brassy rays of the early morning sun slanting towards us. The work was easy, there were 2 iwes hoeing the plants out of the ridges and piling them together. We would come along after and pick the shells from the plants and deposit them in a large mealie meal sack. Ba Kaunda was plying Joel and I with questions about life in America which we'd do our best to answer, asking in turn about Zambian life for comparison purposes. We covered a lot of ground: wealth, sexual norms, food, grieving, at times laughing at the strangeness of the other culture's traditions or marveling at just how similar we could be. There was a brief pause in the conversation and we worked on in companionable silence until ba Kaunda asked another question: "did you know that while you were gone my daughter died?"
No, I hadn't known. Her oldest daughter had died in Chimpempe while away at school and had been buried there, the body unable to be returned to Muyembe. Ba Kaunda explained that it had been a stomach problem of some sort, nobody seemed to really know but it had killed her daughter quickly. As she was explaining this to me the slightest tremor ran through her voice and she bent quickly over a pile of groundnuts. I stared down at my feet, embarrassed to witness this dignified woman's pain and understanding how awkward and inadequate I was. She shakily finished her story, the hurt almost palpable in the air. I offered my condolences, fully aware that the words I voiced were part of the American grieving ritual where certain stock phrases are expected and used, but which are probably mostly meaningless over here.
I'm hesitant to tell stories like that, which is why my posts are usually filled with only funny (well, attempted funny at least) or innocuous tales. The sad stories happen in a certain context that is usually too difficult to describe in a post. I don't want people to only believe that all is death and despair over here, as nothing could be further from the truth. Yet it is true that tragedy seems to lurk nearer the surface in zambia, and strikes frequently. Mostly, I told this story to someone on the phone who asked me to write it down, so I did. Hope you all are well.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Trichinosis
i am currently down in lusaka, we've just had TOT (training of trainers, part of peace corps' ongoing love affair with acronyms) which is basically a logistics meeting for all the trainers who will be helping with the new intake of volunteers due in june. i'll be helping to train the life group for the last 3 weeks of training, should be fun. this also is a reminder that i now have been in zambia for a full year, seems incredible.
my friend joel has left, back to the land of milk and honey. we had a great time while he was here, the presence of not one but two muzungus in muyembe really thrilled the children--they got some quality white man watching in. joel and i started playing frisbee on the soccer pitch when we didn't have much else to do, giving us an opportunity to showcase our 2 inch vertical leaps, mediocre running ability and lead hands. the first time we played i looked up after the first few tosses to see knots of children literally sprinting towards us to get a look at what we were doing. every frisbee game after that we'd be surrounded by kids which made it difficult to chase down errant tosses--a problem since 90% of our throws could be categorized as such. once we grew tired, though, it was nice to have them around as they would scamper after particularly bad throws as well as the occasional hat hurled in frustration. plus, the game was so foreign to them they probably didn't realize you aren't supposed to allow the frisbee to bounce of your hand/knee/face or launch it 20 feet over your partner's head.
last week the life/rap programs in luapula held a week-long workshop for village counterparts on a variety of subjects. it was a good time and beneficial i think, there were several interesting discussions about gender. it is funny to hear zambians air certain opinions on the topic, mostly because we westerners have been trained to be so highly sensitive about the subject; zambians, however, will blithely bust out with a sexist comment. as the only american male at the workshop it was sometimes up to me to try to counter some of those opinions since the american girls probably didn't have as much credibility in zambian eyes. one counterpart in all seriousness opined that good nutrition lessens divorce since "women aren't so difficult, if they're well-fed they will be happy." knowing i should say something, i broke in and offered that that was probably only true if there was chocolate involved. somehow, the girls later forgot to thank me for defending them.
we always try to incorporate hiv/aids discussions into every workshop we have, simply because all other development work we try to do is pointless if zambia doesn't start halting the epidemic that is absolutely crippling the country. so, hiv/aids education is critical and serious, but there are moments when it is difficult to maintain the somber face the topic deserves; i usually find myself wondering what the appropriate facial expression should be when watching a zambian counterpart struggle to demonstrate the proper condom application method using whatever model we have had to press into service (a bike pump once, usually bananas or cucumbers--a pcv once used a bottle of beer in a bar. he told me later that he was feeling pretty good about his extension technique until he tried to fill a condom with a liter of water to prove his boast about how strong condoms are. the condom broke, spilling water all over the floor and leaving him to try and convince a skeptical crowd that he'd been using one that had expired).
we recently had our province-wide meetings; me, shawn, richard, maneesh, and parker all decided to kill and roast a pig as we'd done during manfest '06. we spent a lot of time bragging about how this pig would be the best pork anyone had ever had, since we'd done so well at shawn's the one time we'd tried it (we now understand that that particular success was what is commonly referred to as "blind luck"). i killed the pig and we then convinced the guard to clean it, who finished the job about 3 times as quickly as we could have. we stuck it in the ground and continued raising expectations of magnificent pork among the other pcv's. about 14 hours later, with an expectant crowd gathered around, we pulled the pig out. silence...and then richard turning to erin and discreetly inquiring if she could run to the store and get 5 extra bottles of barbecue sauce. the pig was nowhere near cooked, a serious blow to the assembled male egos. several rash promises were made (mostly be me and shawn) to eat the thing anyway to prove all the complaining crybabies wrong but cooler heads prevailed and we ended up butchering the thing and roasting it like crazy. the pork turned out ok but what little faith the girls had in our culinary abilities was forever destroyed.
my friend joel has left, back to the land of milk and honey. we had a great time while he was here, the presence of not one but two muzungus in muyembe really thrilled the children--they got some quality white man watching in. joel and i started playing frisbee on the soccer pitch when we didn't have much else to do, giving us an opportunity to showcase our 2 inch vertical leaps, mediocre running ability and lead hands. the first time we played i looked up after the first few tosses to see knots of children literally sprinting towards us to get a look at what we were doing. every frisbee game after that we'd be surrounded by kids which made it difficult to chase down errant tosses--a problem since 90% of our throws could be categorized as such. once we grew tired, though, it was nice to have them around as they would scamper after particularly bad throws as well as the occasional hat hurled in frustration. plus, the game was so foreign to them they probably didn't realize you aren't supposed to allow the frisbee to bounce of your hand/knee/face or launch it 20 feet over your partner's head.
last week the life/rap programs in luapula held a week-long workshop for village counterparts on a variety of subjects. it was a good time and beneficial i think, there were several interesting discussions about gender. it is funny to hear zambians air certain opinions on the topic, mostly because we westerners have been trained to be so highly sensitive about the subject; zambians, however, will blithely bust out with a sexist comment. as the only american male at the workshop it was sometimes up to me to try to counter some of those opinions since the american girls probably didn't have as much credibility in zambian eyes. one counterpart in all seriousness opined that good nutrition lessens divorce since "women aren't so difficult, if they're well-fed they will be happy." knowing i should say something, i broke in and offered that that was probably only true if there was chocolate involved. somehow, the girls later forgot to thank me for defending them.
we always try to incorporate hiv/aids discussions into every workshop we have, simply because all other development work we try to do is pointless if zambia doesn't start halting the epidemic that is absolutely crippling the country. so, hiv/aids education is critical and serious, but there are moments when it is difficult to maintain the somber face the topic deserves; i usually find myself wondering what the appropriate facial expression should be when watching a zambian counterpart struggle to demonstrate the proper condom application method using whatever model we have had to press into service (a bike pump once, usually bananas or cucumbers--a pcv once used a bottle of beer in a bar. he told me later that he was feeling pretty good about his extension technique until he tried to fill a condom with a liter of water to prove his boast about how strong condoms are. the condom broke, spilling water all over the floor and leaving him to try and convince a skeptical crowd that he'd been using one that had expired).
we recently had our province-wide meetings; me, shawn, richard, maneesh, and parker all decided to kill and roast a pig as we'd done during manfest '06. we spent a lot of time bragging about how this pig would be the best pork anyone had ever had, since we'd done so well at shawn's the one time we'd tried it (we now understand that that particular success was what is commonly referred to as "blind luck"). i killed the pig and we then convinced the guard to clean it, who finished the job about 3 times as quickly as we could have. we stuck it in the ground and continued raising expectations of magnificent pork among the other pcv's. about 14 hours later, with an expectant crowd gathered around, we pulled the pig out. silence...and then richard turning to erin and discreetly inquiring if she could run to the store and get 5 extra bottles of barbecue sauce. the pig was nowhere near cooked, a serious blow to the assembled male egos. several rash promises were made (mostly be me and shawn) to eat the thing anyway to prove all the complaining crybabies wrong but cooler heads prevailed and we ended up butchering the thing and roasting it like crazy. the pork turned out ok but what little faith the girls had in our culinary abilities was forever destroyed.
Monday, April 16, 2007
The Wheel in the Sky Keeps on Turnin'
i'm going to apologize ahead of time for this post, i'm a bit wired at the moment from two consecutive long days of public transport and lots of sugar consumed during transit.
easter vacation was an absolute blast. at lake malawi we spent about a week at a place called mayoka village, beautiful and very relaxed. i've decided that one of my favorite things about traveling in africa is the variety and quality of people you bump into. it takes a certain type of traveler to cruise around africa for long periods of time so often there's a feeling of almost instant kinship and camraderie when you run into other travelers. just on this trip alone i met people from germany, sweden, switzerland, u.s.a., iceland, zimbabwe, malawi, britain, canada, lebanon (an older gentleman named kamal who lived in sierra leone for a long time but left when the fighting broke out; he said he made the decision to leave when the hotel he was holed up in got rocketed by the rebels trying to flush out the nigerian peacekeepers hiding in the basement...good call), ecuador, and probably a few i'm forgetting.
i've decided anyone speaking with a british accent can sound sophisticated no matter what, even if they're discussing foot fungus or the like--this led me to wonder if i should start buttressing my arguments that are based on shaky logic with a hint of a british accent.
joel and i spent the first few days of our stay mostly hanging out with kamal and his group until they left and we met a couple of girls, cat and susie, from seattle who, despite thinking that boas are an acceptable fashion accessory, were very cool. we later met two american guys who joined our contingent, one of whom was born and raised in new york but has managed to escape the fate of being a yankees fan (this could be key to breaking the vicious cycle that is being a yankees fan), and in fact has the good sense to be a red sox fan. that's how i found myself one evening discussing red sox minutiae, like who was the second baseman when the sox won the world series (mark bellhorn, better known as "blowhorn" in my circle of maine friends; it defies the imagination how a guy can strike out that much). this type of fascinating discussion inexplicably drove cat away although susie, also fortunate enough to be a sox fan, hung on.
the guy from sweden (andreas) had just recently been expelled from zimbabwe; apparently he spent an evening antagonizing a government official (launching the conversation with "so, i hear you guys are torturing dissidents down here"...subtlety, apparently, is not a skill he has acquired in his extensive travels). it was fascinating to listen to his story as there were two zimbabweans there who work for advocacy groups in that country, one of whom knew the government official in question and let andreas know he'd been extremely lucky to only get expelled from the country. i had mixed feelings about the whole thing. on the one hand it had clearly been unwise, pointless, and self-indulgent; he could simply leave the country, yet the people still there trying to change the system probably had their work made just a bit harder by his conversation. on the other hand, it's hard not to secretly cheer when someone stands up to those arrogant, bombastic jerks currently running zimbabwe. it's saddening to talk to zimbabweans about their country, they speak about how beautiful and modern and free it used to be, an african success story, only to see it now crumble beneath the hand of a tyrant. it is now a virtual police state where torture and beatings and arrests are commonplace, where people simply do not talk about politics in public for fear of being overheard by the secret police. it's tragic, but if mugabe can somehow be removed the country still has the capacity to rebound.
on to happier things. lake malawi is beautiful and massive and has a surprisingly tropical feel to it. you can see mozambique if you look directly across the lake, but it's long enough that looking down it only reveals more water. mayoka village is perched right on the shore of the lake and consists of a scattering of chalets and a big dorm room; the whole complex is built up the side of a hill steep enough that when you're looking out towards the lake from the main dining room/bar/hangout porch area all you can see is water and the far shore, as if the building rests in the water. the place is run by two south africans named gary and catherine, who say the word "cool" in a manner i hope to someday mimic. it's soft and drawn out, accompanied by a beatific smile and nodding head, as if their use of "cool" was an acknowledgment of some greater cosmic truth you had just helped them glimpse.
i am now scuba certified as i took a dive course during my time there. i'm completely hooked, everything is more interesting 12 meters under water. the lake houses about 850 varieties of cichlids--brightly colored fish, usually electric blue although i also saw some that were pure white. what i enjoyed even more than the sensation of swimming through a massive aquarium was the terrain of the lake, huge jumbles of boulders everywhere and cliffs we would swim to and peak over and see only blue turning to darker blue to black, an expanse of nothingness that inevitably fires the imagination and makes you wonder about what exotic creatures could possibly be lurking down there. occasionally we would swim beneath overhangs and watch the air bubbles get caught beneath the rocks; the bubbles have the hard, metallic silver color of mercury and would tumble and undulate across the bottom of the rock and finally escape and drift towards the surface. everything appears graceful underwater, even my multiple faceplants into the sandy bottom when i couldn't "maintain positive bouyancy" (a phrase that i mostly understand). in a word, diving is cooool.
this post is far too long, the people i met on this trip who had a severe enough lapse of judgment to ask me for the blog address are probably already regretting it. i'll try to write later about south luangwa national park which we visited; if we meet someday and you're interested to hear more about lake malawi, mayoka village, et al, i'll be happy to bore you to tears with interminable stories. stay well.
easter vacation was an absolute blast. at lake malawi we spent about a week at a place called mayoka village, beautiful and very relaxed. i've decided that one of my favorite things about traveling in africa is the variety and quality of people you bump into. it takes a certain type of traveler to cruise around africa for long periods of time so often there's a feeling of almost instant kinship and camraderie when you run into other travelers. just on this trip alone i met people from germany, sweden, switzerland, u.s.a., iceland, zimbabwe, malawi, britain, canada, lebanon (an older gentleman named kamal who lived in sierra leone for a long time but left when the fighting broke out; he said he made the decision to leave when the hotel he was holed up in got rocketed by the rebels trying to flush out the nigerian peacekeepers hiding in the basement...good call), ecuador, and probably a few i'm forgetting.
i've decided anyone speaking with a british accent can sound sophisticated no matter what, even if they're discussing foot fungus or the like--this led me to wonder if i should start buttressing my arguments that are based on shaky logic with a hint of a british accent.
joel and i spent the first few days of our stay mostly hanging out with kamal and his group until they left and we met a couple of girls, cat and susie, from seattle who, despite thinking that boas are an acceptable fashion accessory, were very cool. we later met two american guys who joined our contingent, one of whom was born and raised in new york but has managed to escape the fate of being a yankees fan (this could be key to breaking the vicious cycle that is being a yankees fan), and in fact has the good sense to be a red sox fan. that's how i found myself one evening discussing red sox minutiae, like who was the second baseman when the sox won the world series (mark bellhorn, better known as "blowhorn" in my circle of maine friends; it defies the imagination how a guy can strike out that much). this type of fascinating discussion inexplicably drove cat away although susie, also fortunate enough to be a sox fan, hung on.
the guy from sweden (andreas) had just recently been expelled from zimbabwe; apparently he spent an evening antagonizing a government official (launching the conversation with "so, i hear you guys are torturing dissidents down here"...subtlety, apparently, is not a skill he has acquired in his extensive travels). it was fascinating to listen to his story as there were two zimbabweans there who work for advocacy groups in that country, one of whom knew the government official in question and let andreas know he'd been extremely lucky to only get expelled from the country. i had mixed feelings about the whole thing. on the one hand it had clearly been unwise, pointless, and self-indulgent; he could simply leave the country, yet the people still there trying to change the system probably had their work made just a bit harder by his conversation. on the other hand, it's hard not to secretly cheer when someone stands up to those arrogant, bombastic jerks currently running zimbabwe. it's saddening to talk to zimbabweans about their country, they speak about how beautiful and modern and free it used to be, an african success story, only to see it now crumble beneath the hand of a tyrant. it is now a virtual police state where torture and beatings and arrests are commonplace, where people simply do not talk about politics in public for fear of being overheard by the secret police. it's tragic, but if mugabe can somehow be removed the country still has the capacity to rebound.
on to happier things. lake malawi is beautiful and massive and has a surprisingly tropical feel to it. you can see mozambique if you look directly across the lake, but it's long enough that looking down it only reveals more water. mayoka village is perched right on the shore of the lake and consists of a scattering of chalets and a big dorm room; the whole complex is built up the side of a hill steep enough that when you're looking out towards the lake from the main dining room/bar/hangout porch area all you can see is water and the far shore, as if the building rests in the water. the place is run by two south africans named gary and catherine, who say the word "cool" in a manner i hope to someday mimic. it's soft and drawn out, accompanied by a beatific smile and nodding head, as if their use of "cool" was an acknowledgment of some greater cosmic truth you had just helped them glimpse.
i am now scuba certified as i took a dive course during my time there. i'm completely hooked, everything is more interesting 12 meters under water. the lake houses about 850 varieties of cichlids--brightly colored fish, usually electric blue although i also saw some that were pure white. what i enjoyed even more than the sensation of swimming through a massive aquarium was the terrain of the lake, huge jumbles of boulders everywhere and cliffs we would swim to and peak over and see only blue turning to darker blue to black, an expanse of nothingness that inevitably fires the imagination and makes you wonder about what exotic creatures could possibly be lurking down there. occasionally we would swim beneath overhangs and watch the air bubbles get caught beneath the rocks; the bubbles have the hard, metallic silver color of mercury and would tumble and undulate across the bottom of the rock and finally escape and drift towards the surface. everything appears graceful underwater, even my multiple faceplants into the sandy bottom when i couldn't "maintain positive bouyancy" (a phrase that i mostly understand). in a word, diving is cooool.
this post is far too long, the people i met on this trip who had a severe enough lapse of judgment to ask me for the blog address are probably already regretting it. i'll try to write later about south luangwa national park which we visited; if we meet someday and you're interested to hear more about lake malawi, mayoka village, et al, i'll be happy to bore you to tears with interminable stories. stay well.
Monday, April 2, 2007
Super Maheu and Other Rotten Things
i am currently in lusaka as i begin my easter vacation. we are going first to south luangwa national park in eastern province, then on to lake malawi which is located in, yes, malawi. should be good times.
it is with sadness that i announce the end of moustache march, an annual luapula tradition. it's a fun time but can also have serious implications for our work (parker claims people stopped attending his meetings when he had a moustache last year), social life, and general self-esteem. i am pleased to say that i was the proud owner of one of the "best" moustaches, meaning the most gross looking; others who will not remain nameless (shawn) did not fare as well: it looked like a caterpillar with mange died on his upper lip.
the great (or not so great, depending on with whom you speak) hair experiment has also ended, i am now clean-shaven with a buzz cut for the first time since i've been in country. it was for the best, and may have preempted a threatened haircutting intervention by one of the girls. plus this means i can now attend kim's birthday party, she made a general announcement that anyone with moustaches or other similary unacceptable hair manifestations would not be allowed in the door.
my friend joel has been visiting me for the last month, he was a pcv in guinea but was evacuated after the country began to experience a lot of internal unrest. it's been great having a good friend from home around, we've spent some time at my site but have also been traveling around kawambwa district seeing what there is to see. since joel spent about a year in guinea he's well acquainted with the strangeness that can occur over here sometimes, so he's had no problems adapting to pc zambia life. although, in my opinion, he has actually assimilated a bit too well, as he now professes a love for a maize-based drink called super maheu, a fate that doesn't normally befall someone until they've been in country for a long time and the resulting food desperation and loss of taste buds has set in. joel's poor culinary sensibilities has actually plunged him in the midst of a long-standing feud between shawn and i: shawn claims that super maheu is delicious and can serve as both food and drink (probably because of the floating maize chunks), whereas i claim that liking it is the surest sign one can receive of approaching senility. richard has even joined the fray on shawn's side, something that saddened me and made me realize that things like "logic" "truth," and "sound reasoning" were going to have no currency at all in the discussion. things degenerated to the point that my manliness was questioned: my formerly long, flowing hair and love of musicals aside, i'm as manly as the next guy. an uneasy detente now exists over the subject.
well, i'm going to keep this short as i have pressing business to attend to (i'm watching the red sox season opener!! parker has a friend who'll be watching the game, he wisely decided to tell me about it knowing that if he didn't it would be a serious blow to our friendship). hopefully i'll have time in the next month or so to let you all know how my vacation went and how work is progressing. hope you all are well.
it is with sadness that i announce the end of moustache march, an annual luapula tradition. it's a fun time but can also have serious implications for our work (parker claims people stopped attending his meetings when he had a moustache last year), social life, and general self-esteem. i am pleased to say that i was the proud owner of one of the "best" moustaches, meaning the most gross looking; others who will not remain nameless (shawn) did not fare as well: it looked like a caterpillar with mange died on his upper lip.
the great (or not so great, depending on with whom you speak) hair experiment has also ended, i am now clean-shaven with a buzz cut for the first time since i've been in country. it was for the best, and may have preempted a threatened haircutting intervention by one of the girls. plus this means i can now attend kim's birthday party, she made a general announcement that anyone with moustaches or other similary unacceptable hair manifestations would not be allowed in the door.
my friend joel has been visiting me for the last month, he was a pcv in guinea but was evacuated after the country began to experience a lot of internal unrest. it's been great having a good friend from home around, we've spent some time at my site but have also been traveling around kawambwa district seeing what there is to see. since joel spent about a year in guinea he's well acquainted with the strangeness that can occur over here sometimes, so he's had no problems adapting to pc zambia life. although, in my opinion, he has actually assimilated a bit too well, as he now professes a love for a maize-based drink called super maheu, a fate that doesn't normally befall someone until they've been in country for a long time and the resulting food desperation and loss of taste buds has set in. joel's poor culinary sensibilities has actually plunged him in the midst of a long-standing feud between shawn and i: shawn claims that super maheu is delicious and can serve as both food and drink (probably because of the floating maize chunks), whereas i claim that liking it is the surest sign one can receive of approaching senility. richard has even joined the fray on shawn's side, something that saddened me and made me realize that things like "logic" "truth," and "sound reasoning" were going to have no currency at all in the discussion. things degenerated to the point that my manliness was questioned: my formerly long, flowing hair and love of musicals aside, i'm as manly as the next guy. an uneasy detente now exists over the subject.
well, i'm going to keep this short as i have pressing business to attend to (i'm watching the red sox season opener!! parker has a friend who'll be watching the game, he wisely decided to tell me about it knowing that if he didn't it would be a serious blow to our friendship). hopefully i'll have time in the next month or so to let you all know how my vacation went and how work is progressing. hope you all are well.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Malarial Bike Rides
well, it's been quite a while since i have written anything, i've been at my site for an extended period of time so haven't been able to get to the internet. however, i'm hoping to write a bit in the next few days, so maybe that will make up for my delinquency.
my closest pcv friend in luapula province and closest neighbor's name is shawn, you may remember me mentioning him in connection with the pig slaughter during manfest. i may just start following him around every day as some how he gets himself into ridiculous situations on a semi-regular basis, most of which are extremely funny in the re-telling. his latest fiasco began when he got malaria for the second time. malaria hits pretty hard and fast so your decision-making can become rather fuzzy, which apparently was true in this case. shawn took some anti-malaria medication but misread the instructions and ended up swallowing twice the prescribed dosage. as one of his village friends said after shawn told him how much he'd taken, "that's not good." several hours later shawn had a high fever and his heart was racing so his friend, mulonga, decided to take him to the hospital which was about 10 kms away. however, it was 10 o'clock on a moonless night, and trying to navigate a wet bush path with someone on your bike rack in the dark is just about the least pleasant biking experience you can have. to complicate matters, shawn weighs more than mulonga so the front of the bike kept popping up into the air, leading to multiple crashes, some of which were in mud puddles. several hours later, covered in mud and thoroughly exhausted, mulonga pedalled into kawambwa with shawn clinging feebly to the bike rack. as it turns out there wasn't much that could be done other than to wait for the affects of the drug to wear off, so shawn spent the night in a mosquitoe net-less hospital room with an i.v. in his arm, watching the mosquitoes buzz over to bite him. he traveled to lusaka the next morning and was given a clean bill of health by the peace corps medical officer (although, as i pointed out to shawn later, they probably should have run some tests for pre-existing brain damage, considering that he hadn't been able to follow the simple instructions on the medication's box...he wasn't amused).
when shawn told me the story i really wasn't surprised by the lengths to which mulonga went to make sure that shawn would be okay. volunteers have a lot of stories about their villagers looking after them, sometimes even when they don't know the villager very well. i think there are a number of different reasons for it, one of which is that zambians have such a strong sense of hospitality and obligation towards their guests. we live in the villages and try to assimilate as much as possible but in certain respects we'll always be guests, which means that zambians, especially our friends, very much feel that they're responsible for our safety.
i was in kazembe about a month ago with my missionary friends, tom and amy, and we were sitting around in a van waiting for the butcher to show up with the beef that they'd ordered. the guy was already an hour and a half late, which means that he was only a little late by zambian standards. we were chatting away when i noticed a procession coming down the dusty main street of the town towards us. it was a group of six men carrying a bed on their shoulders in much the way you would carry a coffin; they were sweating heavily and some had their jaws clenched as they labored under the weight of the bed and the woman lying in it. one of the woman's hands hung limply over the side and her face was turned towards us, eyes shut, her countenance not so much pain-filled as resolute, as if she were trying to hang on. silence settled over the car as we watched them trudge on in the direction of the hospital, until amy quietly said "sometimes you just forget..."
she's right, sometimes i just forget about the depth of poverty many people are facing over here, and the situations in which it places them. there are a lot of reasons for my forgetfulness: one is that i have become familiar with it and it seems nearly normal, but a big one is self-preservation. however, there are moments like the one described above that serve to suddenly and painfully remind me about how difficult life can be. it was a sobering moment, made all the sadder because moments like that occur many times a day all over the world.
so, as i said, i hope to write a few more emails in the next several days. my friend joel is going to be visiting me soon for hopefully an extended stay, he was with the peace corps in guinea but has been evacuated as the country has become a mess over the last few months. we also have the annual luapula celebration that is known as moustache march, followed closely by mullet may coming soon...the events in question are probably going to be as gross as the names would suggest (when planning activities, we usually start with a basic query: how can we look the most physically repulsive? and go from there). hoping you are all well
my closest pcv friend in luapula province and closest neighbor's name is shawn, you may remember me mentioning him in connection with the pig slaughter during manfest. i may just start following him around every day as some how he gets himself into ridiculous situations on a semi-regular basis, most of which are extremely funny in the re-telling. his latest fiasco began when he got malaria for the second time. malaria hits pretty hard and fast so your decision-making can become rather fuzzy, which apparently was true in this case. shawn took some anti-malaria medication but misread the instructions and ended up swallowing twice the prescribed dosage. as one of his village friends said after shawn told him how much he'd taken, "that's not good." several hours later shawn had a high fever and his heart was racing so his friend, mulonga, decided to take him to the hospital which was about 10 kms away. however, it was 10 o'clock on a moonless night, and trying to navigate a wet bush path with someone on your bike rack in the dark is just about the least pleasant biking experience you can have. to complicate matters, shawn weighs more than mulonga so the front of the bike kept popping up into the air, leading to multiple crashes, some of which were in mud puddles. several hours later, covered in mud and thoroughly exhausted, mulonga pedalled into kawambwa with shawn clinging feebly to the bike rack. as it turns out there wasn't much that could be done other than to wait for the affects of the drug to wear off, so shawn spent the night in a mosquitoe net-less hospital room with an i.v. in his arm, watching the mosquitoes buzz over to bite him. he traveled to lusaka the next morning and was given a clean bill of health by the peace corps medical officer (although, as i pointed out to shawn later, they probably should have run some tests for pre-existing brain damage, considering that he hadn't been able to follow the simple instructions on the medication's box...he wasn't amused).
when shawn told me the story i really wasn't surprised by the lengths to which mulonga went to make sure that shawn would be okay. volunteers have a lot of stories about their villagers looking after them, sometimes even when they don't know the villager very well. i think there are a number of different reasons for it, one of which is that zambians have such a strong sense of hospitality and obligation towards their guests. we live in the villages and try to assimilate as much as possible but in certain respects we'll always be guests, which means that zambians, especially our friends, very much feel that they're responsible for our safety.
i was in kazembe about a month ago with my missionary friends, tom and amy, and we were sitting around in a van waiting for the butcher to show up with the beef that they'd ordered. the guy was already an hour and a half late, which means that he was only a little late by zambian standards. we were chatting away when i noticed a procession coming down the dusty main street of the town towards us. it was a group of six men carrying a bed on their shoulders in much the way you would carry a coffin; they were sweating heavily and some had their jaws clenched as they labored under the weight of the bed and the woman lying in it. one of the woman's hands hung limply over the side and her face was turned towards us, eyes shut, her countenance not so much pain-filled as resolute, as if she were trying to hang on. silence settled over the car as we watched them trudge on in the direction of the hospital, until amy quietly said "sometimes you just forget..."
she's right, sometimes i just forget about the depth of poverty many people are facing over here, and the situations in which it places them. there are a lot of reasons for my forgetfulness: one is that i have become familiar with it and it seems nearly normal, but a big one is self-preservation. however, there are moments like the one described above that serve to suddenly and painfully remind me about how difficult life can be. it was a sobering moment, made all the sadder because moments like that occur many times a day all over the world.
so, as i said, i hope to write a few more emails in the next several days. my friend joel is going to be visiting me soon for hopefully an extended stay, he was with the peace corps in guinea but has been evacuated as the country has become a mess over the last few months. we also have the annual luapula celebration that is known as moustache march, followed closely by mullet may coming soon...the events in question are probably going to be as gross as the names would suggest (when planning activities, we usually start with a basic query: how can we look the most physically repulsive? and go from there). hoping you are all well
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Pictures
These are mostly from Namibia and a few from Livingstone. Hope you enjoy.
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AbM2Ldm1ZMmLj4
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AbM2Ldm1ZMmLj4
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Namibia
well, my christmas/new year's vacation has just about ended, i am now back in lusaka and am heading up to mansa tomorrow. the time away flew by, of course, but i had a wonderful trip and have no complaints. so much happened it would be impossible to recount them all in an email, but i'll try to give you some of the highlights.
namibia is far more developed than zambia and has a very western feel to it as it is a big tourist destination for germans and south africans. it was strange to suddenly be surrounded again by wealth and so many modern conveniences: the running joke throughout the trip was that it was like an extended episode of the "beverly hillbillies" as we wandered slack-jawed around gas stations and exclaimed about things like how many different types of candy bars there were. we also discovered a kentucky fried chicken restaurant in windhoek; if you've never seen a group of male pcv's descend on a kfc after having spent months in the african bush, it's a ferocious sight...we ended up eating there 5 times. the first time three of us, myself, parker and brad, split the family meal which was 12 pieces of chicken and a bunch of sides. the lady actually rolled her eyes at parker when he made the order, but she obviously didn't have any experience with peace corps as we finished it off without breaking a sweat. the best kfc moment involved brad several days later, however, when he tried to eat a 21 piece bucket all by himself. at about piece 13 he began to look as if he'd taken a suckerpunch to the solar plexus, and he declared defeat at piece 16 and spent the next several hours walking about in slow motion. ari and parker had split a 21 piece in a show of solidarity and managed to struggle through to the end, but not before i had to give parker a peptalk and ari appeared to be taking a nap. so, a bit humbled but much wiser about the advisability of trifling with the 21 piece kfc bucket, we took a several day hiatus from the colonel. (endnote: later in the day richard went back to kfc and they were closed with a sign hanging on the front saying they had run out of chicken...i swear. also, parker counted it up and realized he'd eaten 24 pieces of kfc chicken during the trip).
skydiving was the most fun i had on the trip. eston, doug, and i along with our tandem instructors and 3 soloists all climbed into a small plane and began the ascent. there was very little talking or movement as we were all crammed closed together and the wind whistling by the open door made it difficult to chat. i spent most of my time craning my neck to look out the window at the ocean and desert stretching out all around...it was an incredible view. suddenly, the plane erupted into a flurry of activity as we reached the drop point 12,000 feet in the air. the soloists went first, striding to the open door and leaping out one after another with arms and legs spread as if they were belly-flopping into a pool. as they jumped the rest of us, strapped to our instructors, were frantically scooting our way across the floor and towards the door. i barely had time to give eston a thumbs up and doug a slap on the back before they were gone so abruptly it seemed like they'd been sucked out the side of the plane. then it was my turn and i was sitting with my legs dangling out the side of the door with the wind screaming by and my heart in my mouth. we rocked back as we discussed during our breif training session, then forward, toppling out the side of the plane. the ocean where it met the horizon tilted up towards me and then slanted diagonally as our momentum caused our bodies to swing until we were falling with our heads pointed straight towards the earth several miles below. we both flung our arms out, arched our backs and bent our legs at the knees and plummeted for about 45 seconds towards the ground. the wind was whistling by my ears so fast it sounded like a mechanical hum, and i could feel the air around me grow noticeably warmer. i opened my mouth to let out what i hoped was a manly whoop but the air pounding up at me almost instantly dried my mouth and throat. stretched out below me was sand and ocean and the town, swakopmund, a perfect view until we dropped into cloud cover and everything was partially veiled by a gauzy haze. then we were through the clouds and the instructor yanked the rip cord, my shoulders were jerked back and my legs swung forward and we drifted slowly for about 5 minutes until we touched down. there was a lot of backslapping and whooping back on earth, and shouted exclamations like "that was awesome!" and various other profundities. i've had some time to think about the experience but that word is still the best i can come up with with: it was simply "awesome."
there were a lot of other interesting and fun things that happened as well. i ate a ton of food, hamburgers, pizzas, chinese, mexican, indian, basically everything i could get my hands on. we saw ostriches, kudu, meerkats, zebras, and hardly any insects, which was a pleasant change. we went to sossuvlei, home of the world's largest sand dune at 350 meters high. i'm too lazy right now to convert that into feet, but take my word for it, it's a lot. we hung out on the beach (first time i'd seen the ocean in 7 months), went fishing, saw 3 different movies in a theatre (DO NOT SEE "Deja vu," it's awful. the girls liked it but the guys hated it, which, as parker pointed out, is a classic case of taste vs. extreme irrationality), and basically bashed around windhoek and swakopmund and enjoyed a lot of amenities we'd forgotten were so nice to have.
namibia is far more developed than zambia and has a very western feel to it as it is a big tourist destination for germans and south africans. it was strange to suddenly be surrounded again by wealth and so many modern conveniences: the running joke throughout the trip was that it was like an extended episode of the "beverly hillbillies" as we wandered slack-jawed around gas stations and exclaimed about things like how many different types of candy bars there were. we also discovered a kentucky fried chicken restaurant in windhoek; if you've never seen a group of male pcv's descend on a kfc after having spent months in the african bush, it's a ferocious sight...we ended up eating there 5 times. the first time three of us, myself, parker and brad, split the family meal which was 12 pieces of chicken and a bunch of sides. the lady actually rolled her eyes at parker when he made the order, but she obviously didn't have any experience with peace corps as we finished it off without breaking a sweat. the best kfc moment involved brad several days later, however, when he tried to eat a 21 piece bucket all by himself. at about piece 13 he began to look as if he'd taken a suckerpunch to the solar plexus, and he declared defeat at piece 16 and spent the next several hours walking about in slow motion. ari and parker had split a 21 piece in a show of solidarity and managed to struggle through to the end, but not before i had to give parker a peptalk and ari appeared to be taking a nap. so, a bit humbled but much wiser about the advisability of trifling with the 21 piece kfc bucket, we took a several day hiatus from the colonel. (endnote: later in the day richard went back to kfc and they were closed with a sign hanging on the front saying they had run out of chicken...i swear. also, parker counted it up and realized he'd eaten 24 pieces of kfc chicken during the trip).
skydiving was the most fun i had on the trip. eston, doug, and i along with our tandem instructors and 3 soloists all climbed into a small plane and began the ascent. there was very little talking or movement as we were all crammed closed together and the wind whistling by the open door made it difficult to chat. i spent most of my time craning my neck to look out the window at the ocean and desert stretching out all around...it was an incredible view. suddenly, the plane erupted into a flurry of activity as we reached the drop point 12,000 feet in the air. the soloists went first, striding to the open door and leaping out one after another with arms and legs spread as if they were belly-flopping into a pool. as they jumped the rest of us, strapped to our instructors, were frantically scooting our way across the floor and towards the door. i barely had time to give eston a thumbs up and doug a slap on the back before they were gone so abruptly it seemed like they'd been sucked out the side of the plane. then it was my turn and i was sitting with my legs dangling out the side of the door with the wind screaming by and my heart in my mouth. we rocked back as we discussed during our breif training session, then forward, toppling out the side of the plane. the ocean where it met the horizon tilted up towards me and then slanted diagonally as our momentum caused our bodies to swing until we were falling with our heads pointed straight towards the earth several miles below. we both flung our arms out, arched our backs and bent our legs at the knees and plummeted for about 45 seconds towards the ground. the wind was whistling by my ears so fast it sounded like a mechanical hum, and i could feel the air around me grow noticeably warmer. i opened my mouth to let out what i hoped was a manly whoop but the air pounding up at me almost instantly dried my mouth and throat. stretched out below me was sand and ocean and the town, swakopmund, a perfect view until we dropped into cloud cover and everything was partially veiled by a gauzy haze. then we were through the clouds and the instructor yanked the rip cord, my shoulders were jerked back and my legs swung forward and we drifted slowly for about 5 minutes until we touched down. there was a lot of backslapping and whooping back on earth, and shouted exclamations like "that was awesome!" and various other profundities. i've had some time to think about the experience but that word is still the best i can come up with with: it was simply "awesome."
there were a lot of other interesting and fun things that happened as well. i ate a ton of food, hamburgers, pizzas, chinese, mexican, indian, basically everything i could get my hands on. we saw ostriches, kudu, meerkats, zebras, and hardly any insects, which was a pleasant change. we went to sossuvlei, home of the world's largest sand dune at 350 meters high. i'm too lazy right now to convert that into feet, but take my word for it, it's a lot. we hung out on the beach (first time i'd seen the ocean in 7 months), went fishing, saw 3 different movies in a theatre (DO NOT SEE "Deja vu," it's awful. the girls liked it but the guys hated it, which, as parker pointed out, is a classic case of taste vs. extreme irrationality), and basically bashed around windhoek and swakopmund and enjoyed a lot of amenities we'd forgotten were so nice to have.
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